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Corban Yaxley (Ninclow)
'Corban Yaxley '(b. September 15, 1935) was a wealthy British wizard and a Death Eater loyal to Lord Voldemort. By the time of the first uprising of the Dark Lord, he was already a high-ranking Ministry of Magic bureaucrat in the Department of International Magical Cooperation, in which capacity he served as a spy. After Lord Voldemort fell from power, Corban was put on trial before the Council of Magical Law for giving information about the Ministry to his comrade Augustus Rookwood, who had been named as a Death Eater. Feigning ignorance of Rookwood's true allegiance, he evaded Azkaban. By the time of the Dark Lord's second rise to power, he had become an influential official in the management of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement and resumed his mission as a spy. Yaxley also fought at several battles of the Second Wizarding War, such as the Battle of the Astronomy Tower. When Voldemort was in control of the Ministry of Magic, Yaxley became the Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. He went on to fight in the Battle of Hogwarts, where he was subdued by George Weasley and Lee Jordan, and subsequently sentenced to Azkaban for life. Biography Family background In spite of their espousal of pure-blood values and their undoubtedly genuine belief in wizards' superiority over Muggles, the Yaxley family have never been above taking pride in their status as progenitors of English nobility, if more often than not prone to gloss over the fact that the founding patriarch of their family was, while wealthy, powerful and a nobleman, also very much a Muggle. The considerable wealth they have at their disposal locked safely is said to be old riches taken from non-magical relatives of the wizarding branch right under their noses, though no conclusive evidence of theft has ever been successfully proven against them. Their introduction to the wizarding world came when another prestigious wizarding family married into theirs in order to gain favor with people in high places and increase their own wealth and ultimately produced a wizard of their own. Born to a Muggle noble and a wily witch by the name of Cassiopeia Malfoy, the first Yaxley ever to possess magical ability grew up fatherless, raised at the magnificent mansion in Wiltshire that had belonged to the Malfoys for centuries and were brought up with his cousins after his mother had fled from Suffolk after being threatened with death by her newly wedded husband when she had told him what she was. it was made clear from an early age, however, that he was not one of them. Though treated just as well and, like them, prudently educated by his uncle to believe in the value of the old boys’ network and taught how to safely maneuver through the cut and thrust of politics, Cadmus Yaxley found it thoroughly unpleasant whenever the adults spoke to the Malfoy children of the family’s innate superiority, leaving the lone Yaxley to feel somewhat abandoned. His mother, on the other hand, never spoke another word of the affair with the Muggle at all, but would dismiss any questions about the man whom she was once meant to marry with an impatient wave of her hand and assure her son that he was a wizard born among common, wandless men whose legacy would outshine his ancestors, whatever their achievements. Within a decade of his departure from school, a turning point in magical history to match the introduction of the International Statute of Wizarding Secrecy came with the establishment of Gringotts Wizarding Bank in the late 15th century. Although said event finally addressed and ultimately served to provide a solution for wizarding Britain's need for some sort of tool with which they could bring balance to the magical economy and disallowed individual wizards, groups or other organisations to manipulate national finances for personal gain and imposing harsh penalties on those who tried. Cadmus, however, were as devious as the Malfoys were wily, and owed in no small part to his kinship to them, succeeded in becoming the first wizard to be entrusted the task of overseeing the affairs of the bank on the behalf of the Wizards' Council after they seized it from its goblin founder and his associates due to their initial belief that goblins could not were not to be trusted with wizarding treasure. A master of delegation and evidently a highly gifted and talented man where currency and assets were concerned, running the bank was a job which Chancellor Yaxley reportedly did so well that subsequent generations often found themselves in senior positions in its management afterwards. Before long, the name of Yaxley were soon recognised as belonging to a up-and-coming wizarding family, and by the 17th century, they found themselves on the very cusp of authority and prestige such as they had never known before when they succeeded in achieving a similar status in the wizarding community as the Malfoys. The signature of the International Statute of Secrecy in 1689 marked the beginning of a traumatic time for witches and wizards, which allowed for the Yaxleys successfully capitalise on the anger felt by much of the magical community at being forced to go underground to gain favour within the then recently established Ministry of Magic, even holding a seat in the Wizengamot. The Yaxleys suffered a devastating fall from grace in 1865, however, after political unrest toppled with numerous goblin rebellions meant that the question about whether or not the bank ought to be returned to goblin hands became hotly debated upon with increasing frequency throughout the year. Fearful of losing their greatest asset, when the Yaxleys heard that the age-old problem of some sort of safe as well as discreet transportation of the underage and the infirm without Muggle detection would be addressed. Upon learning of the Ministry's idea of imitating the Muggles’ relatively new ‘bus service’ for this purpose, the Yaxleys were swift to offer funding for the operation that would allow the Knight Bus to hit the streets, believing that feigned enthusiasm were the only way for them to earn the goodwill of enough people in high places to retain their claim to the bank. t was for this reason that one of Corban's ancestors unwisely insisted on being one of its first passenger, a trip that reportedly caused him sufficient injury to merit admittance into St Mungo's Hospital, and it is often said of the Yaxleys that if they had any objections to the Ministry's final decision a few days later, their patriarch were in no condition to voice them. And so it was that the world in which the Yaxleys for so long had enjoyed such a comfortable existence fell apart. Besides losing possession of the most powerful financial institution known to wizardkind, so certain had they been of their success in keeping Gringotts that none of their fellow pure-blood fanatics had been privy to their scheme, thus inadvertently ending their association with what had hitherto most definitively been enjoyable sphere of social life, seen as most of their peers had announced their intention of boycotting what was dubbed ‘this Muggle-esque outrage’ in the letters page of the Daily Prophet and was swift to inform them of their decisions to cut all ties with them for their apparent pro-Muggle sentiments. As if this was not bad enough, within a month of the goblin's return at the helm of wizarding economy, the first Corban Yaxley found himself taken from the family home and imprisoned, far away, in the fearsome wizard prison guarded by Dementors: Apparently, the new management of Gringotts had informed the newly established Goblin Liaison Office that successive generations of Yaxleys had been found to have been defrauding the bank of countless priceless treasures and antiques brought in from abroad by Curse Breakers by forging bank records and otherwise manipulated the resources of Gringotts for their own ends, such as sponsoring anti-Muggle propaganda like the periodical Warlock at War edited by the pro-wizard activist Brutus Malfoy. Now the goblins wanted blood, although thanks to the Ministry, all they got out of it were almost their entire Yaxley fortune as compensation. Brave in the face of adversity and forever determined not to be a disgrace to the name of wizard, the Yaxleys relocated to the all-wizarding village of Hogsmeade, purchasing a small house for themselves with what little gold they still had and resolved to make the most of what was left of it afterwards, lowering themselves to seek proper employment first when their existence had been fully reduced to one of having to live hand-to-mouth for a year. Proving themselves once more to be shrewd businessmen, however, when Corban's great-grandfather managed to secure a job at the local Owl Post Office and within a year succeeded in not only "persuading" the last owner to pack up and leave without explanation, but also convinced him to hand over the permit, profit and proprietorship over to Mr. Yaxley upon his departure. From that point on, their wealth and influence grew like a particularly pernicious weed, slowly spreading its treacherous vines throughout the little community. By the time Corban was born, his father was the Stationmaster of Stationmaster of Hogsmeade and rent collector of such places as Dervish and Banges, Dogweed and Deathcap, J. Pippin's Potions,Tomes and Scrolls, the local branch of Ollivander's Wand Shop, the village Owl Post Office and the headquarters of the Wizarding Wireless Network. As such, Mr. Yaxley was a man of considerable social standing in the village. Even so, during his formative years, Corban would later feel justified in lamenting over how he had been cheated out of his family's glory days by how the arrogance and carelessness of his own kin had brought the Yaxleys to the very brink of ruin. Early life Around the time of his birth, a 'Pure-Blood Directory' was anonymously published with the aim of helping such families maintain the purity of their bloodlines. Already adhering strongly to the pure-blood doctrine, Corban's parents were overjoyed to discover their name had been listed among the so-called 'Sacred Twenty-Eight', which they saw as a place of great honor and prestige, their careful avoidance of the somewhat dangerous practice of inter-marrying within such a small pool of pure-bloods and occasional elopement with half-bloods to prevent the Yaxleys from becoming enfeebled or unstable notwithstanding. Corban Yaxley was born on September 15, 1935 and grew up in a red little house at the edge of the village of Hogsmeade in the Scottish Highlands, where he acquired his distinctive accent. Throughout the most of his earlier years, Corban had been given the run of the village by his parents, meaning effectively that their son could go more or less wherever he wanted, and the other villagers for the most part let him, fearing the retribution of Mr. and Mrs. Yaxley were the lad to complain to them about unjust treatment. When he was still fairly young, Corban accompanied his father through the streets of Muggle London to get to the Leaky Cauldron on their way to Diagon Alley. Shortly thereafter, he fell grievously ill, having contracted Spattergroit, a highly contagious aliment caused by an infectious fungus, spending several months at the St. Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries, and although he recovered, a complication with his vocal cords after the fungus reached the uvula and temporarily deprived him of the ability to speak left him with a permanently raspy voice, an incident widely believed to have played a part in his later rather vocal support of the controversial theory of Hambledon Quince that Muggles originated from mushrooms. Even so, Corban did not have a very high opinion on his parents growing up. Forever lamenting about what a dangerously egalitarian institution the British Ministry of Magic had become and how deplorable they found its continued liaison with the Muggle Prime Minister to be, it dawned on him how neither of his parents ever showed even the slightest attraction towards the cut and thrust of politics, and while they were both very much preoccupied with maintaining the appearance of respectability in spite of their fall from grace and lead a life consisting, for the most part, of keeping their own company and otherwise just enjoy their well-stocked cellar and library. In the end, he grew to resent both of them for their lack of ambition and felt their failure to make any sort of effort to improve upon the conditions that so often infuriated them to be a shameful failing on their part, reducing them both to a little more than useless hypocrites - equally petty-minded and utterly unremarkable. Whereas his mother and father seemed very much content with their quiet and comfortable existence, Corban, on the other hand, resolved to take it upon himself to restore the Yaxleys to their proper place among the elite pure-blooded families in Great Britain. Embittered by his grandfather's stupidity and the apparent indifference of his parents, a latent desire to make the world sit up and notice him had been forged already before he began going to school, and these conflicts of interest effectively ensured that Corban's early years was formative ones, shaping his mind and resolve for the task at hand. Magical education Like all magical children of geographical proximity, Corban's name had been down for attendance at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry from the day of his birth, but as fate would have it, Corban Yaxley would not set foot within the castle before he was well into adulthood. His father, dissatisfied with the continued employment of the wizard who brought an end Gellert Grindelwald, Corban's father decided to send Corban to be educated elsewhere. And so, when the letter of admittance arrived from Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry arrived on Corban’s eleventh birthday, his father promptly wrote to the Headmaster of the day, declining the offer. In his letter, it was strongly implied that he felt Professor Dippet was lacking the core essential leadership abilities that allowed some of his predecessors, such as Professors Phineas Nigellus Black and Elizabeth Burke, to effectively uphold the standards of the school despite the fact that Salazar Slytherin ultimately failed to fulfill his plans for the purity of wizardkind, a feat at which he proved himself incapable of as evidenced by how he employed the Muggle-loving Albus Dumbledore. Instead, they sent Corban abroad to an ancient hall of learning in which Muggle-borns was not permitted to enter and which took, as his parents saw it, a far more sensible line than Hogwarts about the Dark Arts. And so it was, that Corban Yaxley journeyed north to receive his formal instruction. His arrival there was not the triumph that he and his parents had been hoping for, however: Repeatedly refused by the Headmaster of the day to use the then recently published Book of Spells by Miranda Goshawk, who felt that no witch, regardless of skill, could possibly hope to produce something academically useful within a year of leaving school. Forbidding any further attempts to "force through other published works from his home country" into the curriculum of his professors, Corban was pretty much left to struggle with the rather old-fashioned textbooks listed on his supply list offering nothing but complicated instructions and abstruse concepts he found great difficulty in understanding. And it did not get any easier when the school, much to the chagrin of his parents, sent a letter detailing how their son at Durmstrang was almost failing Transfiguration, Charms, and Herbology. This is not to say that young Yaxley had no talent, but strength-obsessed and dark-flavoured school cultures like the one he had become part of at at was often largely unforgiving of underdogs and had generally little patience with failures. Feeling inadequate under the pressure of his elders and wishing to prove himself, it was natural, perhaps, under such conditions that he took to Dark magic like vampires to blood, which had always been presented to him as a powerful and mysterious tool for a strong-willed young wizard to use to achieve their own ends, which went more or less hand in hand with the latent desire for recognition and greatness he had came to develop over the years. As such, while he did not excel in all of his studies, he soon enjoyed a particularly dark and fearsome reputation in the spheres of duelling and malicious spell-casting that grew increasingly more pronounced with each passing year. He achieved even greater notoriety during the practical parts of his final examinations by graduating on top of his class, having dispassionately and flawlessly demonstrating Dark Magic of the most advanced kind and of a standard that alarmed even the teachers. An advocate for violence and unafraid to use it himself, Corban Yaxley, in spite of his failing to meet all of the expectations that his parents had for him, had become an accomplished duelist, achieving top scores on the exam by famously overcoming his own instructor at combative magic after a long-winded and intense battle by turning him into stone. Upon returning to Great Britain, Corban was very much surprised to learn that news of his impressive if somewhat frightening affinity for the Dark Arts had already reached them, in spite of his best efforts to keep quiet about it. He was even more suprised, however, by how the Ministry, rather than being at the door of the comfortable home of his parents to which he had returned, warning him against using what he had learned at Durmstrang against people instead sent him a letter offering him a job. Apparently, no less a person than Justus Pilliwickle, the celebrated Minister of Magical Law Enforcement believed he would "do a bang" at the Office for the Removal of Curses, Jinxes, and Hexes. He received similar requests from numerous prestigious organisations; apparently, a British wizard educated at Durmstrang was a very rare thing, and as such, the expertise he had acquired there about how the Dark Arts operated prompted associations such as the Magical Committee of Anti-Hex Operations and the Dark Force Defence League to recruit him for their respective causes. Believing themselves to be too good to be any less than living off what little gold they still had left, however, his parents both insisted working had been beneath them and irrationally insisted he should do the same, Corban got angry and loudly accused their lack of ambition to be the reason behind the family's continued poor financial situation, voicing his intention of restoring the Yaxleys to their proper place in the magical community, with or without their help. After packing his things, young Corban headed for London, where he a room in the Leaky Cauldron Inn for the rest of the summer. Working for Gringotts While he found himself sorely tempted to accepting one of his offers to work for the Ministry of Magic in various capacities, Corban found himself turning them all down. Years and years worth of lectures from his parents about his family's once prominent position in the "treasure-and-curse" business had not done anything to lessen the allure of promises of a challenging career involving travel, adventure, and substantial, danger-related treasure bonuses. As such, he submitted a postal application to Gringotts Wizarding Bank, hoping with his fingers crossed that he might be considered for one of the openings he had seen advertised in the Daily Prophet for Curse-Breakers to work overseas. The goblins running the bank, some of which had been working there ever since the Ministry gave them back the bank in 1865, knew perfectly well that it was Corban's greedy and money-minded grandfather who had sowed doubt about the bank's integrity in the minds of their clients, and who had dishonored the name of Gringott. Abruptly turning down his application, and even took the trouble to write back, warning him against trying to scheme his way back into the bank, which naturally only served to strengthen his resolve.to do so: Throughout his school career, he had achieved notoriety for his skill in the Dark Arts, even for a Durmstrang student. His reputed proficiency, as well occasional hexing or cursing of fellow students just to remind them of it, meant that he had become used to get his way, and when the goblins tried to prevent that from happening, Corban decided to take the matter of his employment into his own hands: Which he accomplished by cornering one of its more prominent bankers on its way home from work one evening and, by means of the Confundus Charm, fed the goblin the idea of proposing to his peers that they reconsidered their initial decision to refuse him employment, if for no other reason than that it would be most deserving of the Yaxleys to see their youngest member find himself under their dominion, and the great, personal satisfaction there would be in seeing a former "usurper" bring treasure to the bank on their behalf. An owl was dispatched the following day, informing him that he got the job and would work in Egypt. Albeit rather enthusiastic at first and undeniably a gifted employee, his career was cut tragically short, although it was destined to be. The job of forcing his way through the most vile and ancient of curses at historical sites in sorcery to bring back gold to the bank was one at which he was very good, yet it did not take long before Corban's fondness for the comforts of hearth and home got the better of him. Within a decade of his employment, he had applied for a desk job in England. When he did so, however, he had failed to appreciate that he would be working alongside others in a work environment quite different from what he had been used to. True though it might be that he was far from the only person working at the Egyptian Curse-Breaker Office, they were only about a dozen people and working closely enough together for Corban to weed out the weak and assume at least some sort of (albeit unwarranted) position of leadership where he could boss people around a little bit. In the bank's headquarters, however, not only were any sort of job concerning the day-to-day operation of the bank were reserved to goblins only, but rather than bestowing upon him his own office away from the rabble surrounding him as befitting of a wizard of his heritage, his desk could be found in the middle of a cluster of cubicles up on the third floor alongside those of all the other non-managerial staff, sectioned off only by thin, plane white walls. Even worse, because human employees rarely were seen by the customer base at Gringotts, the formal dress codes were not very strictly enforced, and being told what to do by numerous unfashionable witches and wizards played a part in why the necessity og habituating to the presence of his new co-workers were so difficult. That is not to say that his work held no value to him; Indeed, thanks to his job at the bank, Corban had long developed a keen interest in the unique properties of wizard-made objects and the history behind them, contemporary or otherwise. And as a Broker of magical artifacts, Corban got ample opportunity to deal with just such objects. Chief among his new duties were the valuation of unusual and ancient wizarding artefacts brought in by Curse-Breakers and executing the purchase and sale of just such treasures submitted by the bank's clients. Moe mundane ones included, but were not limited to, researching and determining market value of certain magical items, advertising and showing magical artefacts to prospective buyers and advising clients with regards to offers and related matters. A chance to cement his career, however, would not present itself before more than a decade and a half later, when Corban decided to stop by The White Wyvern for a drink on his way home, where he ended up "persuading" the original landlord to gift him the establishment and leave. Career as Pawnbroker While his father lived long enough to express his dismay with Corban's apparent lack of interest in pu where occupational prestige As the new landlord of The White Wyvern, Corban wasted little time in making several major alterations to the buildings in which the pub was located. The Master of Wishes the Consortium of Goblinary Finance & Red-Nosed Wizard Investors a man of great influence whose presence pervades many organisations Meeting at Hog's Head Coming soon Marriage Coming soon The Dark Lord's request Coming soon First Wizarding War Coming soon. Between the wars Coming soon. Second Wizarding War Coming soon Personality and traits Coming soon. Magical abilities and skills Coming soon. References Category:Males Category:Slytherins Category:Ninclow